Microsoft May Put
Data Center in Siberia

Updated Nov. 26, 2007 6:30 p.m. ET

Microsoft Corp. is considering locating a new data center in Siberia as part of its effort to bulk up on infrastructure needed to better compete with rivals like Google Inc. Microsoft signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of the eastern Irkutsk region of Russia, in which "a data center was one of the topics of negotiation," said Evgeny Danilov, a Microsoft Russia spokesman. He said the company is "still far from final site selection." Data centers, or massive collections of servers, are an important part of Microsoft's plan to take market...